This book celebrates the last 15 years of media arts in Japan. In 1997 the first Japan Media Arts Festival was first held, sponsored by the Council of Cultural Affairs in Japan. Since that time the festival has been held on an annual basis to encourage the further developments of media arts. Over the past 15 years situations surrounding media have changed significantly; this book should be read as a testimony, or a continuing negotiation of those who work in the fields of anime, manga, games, moving images, the Internet, and mixed media arts.

Japanese manga has been a subject of critical inquiry, or a subject of desire, for many male scholars, including Hiroki Azuma. However, there have been hardly any books on girls’ fashion in manga from the female perspective. Characters appearing in manga dress themselves to construct a narrative (reminding me of what Walter. J. Ong argued in relation to “orality”) about themselves. Are manga illustrators just as creative as fashion designers? This book introduces the relationship between characters and fashion to provide a unique perspective on girls’ manga and fashion design.

Ikko Tanaka was a graphic designer and a founding member/art director of MUJI. 21_21 Design Sight, a design museum in Tokyo, organized an exhibition to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of his death. This book serves as an exhibition catalogue with contributors including Tadao Ando reevaluating Tanaka’s achievements in design.

Helmut Schmid is a graphic designer born in Austria in 1942. Currently Schmid lives in Japan and continues to work vigorously. Without question, his book Typography Today, released in 1980, is one of the most significant contributions to the development of typographic design in the last few decades, but Japan Japanese is also a unique book, which revisits Schmid’s early work (1968–73) on the Swiss typography and photography magazine Typografische Monatsblätter. As a look at the precursors to the contents of Typography Today, this book offers a visual historiography of contemporary typography.

A biography of a Japanese textile designer who worked for prominent textile design firms such as Marimekko and Larsen. After working over 40 years as a textile print designer, Wakisaka currently designs for SOUSOU, a fashion brand based in Kyoto. This book is a full of inspirational sources—over 10,000 of them—celebrating Wakisaka’s long and successful career.

In November 2012, MUJI held an exhibition entitled “Patterns of Furniture in Tokyo” and last year Droog mounted the exhibition “Design for Download” in Milan. Why are these design firms sharing and selling digital data? Because digital manufacturing (digital fabrication) is changing the role and meaning of design and designers. Chris Anderson, the former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of Free and The Long Tail, introduces the Maker Movement, the rise of a new kind of DIY through digital fabrication; how 3D printers, 3D scanners, Computer Numerical Control Cutting Machines, and laser cutters can democratize the way we design, make, share, and sell things. Makers sketches the future of design.

While Japan in the 1950s to the 1970s was under the strong influence of the United States, Japanese architects and designers developed new movements like Metabolism and Anonymous Design to visualize the their future. Osaka, as a host city of World Expo 1970, is still filled with various “modernistic” buildings. This book revisits those old futuristic buildings and reintroduces its design details. Fun to read as inspirational design source, cultural anthropology, or architectural history.

It goes without saying that Wim Crouwel is one of the greatest graphic designers of the 20th century. This book—a Japanese edition of the London Design Museum exhibition catalogue originally published by Unit Editions* and now out of print—celebrates more than 60 years of Crouwel’s designs, including his rigorous grid system, typographic designs such as the New Alphabet, and museum exhibitions.

A portrait of Spin, one of London’s leading design studios, which has produced work in identity, print, moving image, retail, digital, and environmental graphics. Includes essays and interviews with Spin’s founders, Tony Brook and Patricia Finegan, and texts by Paula Scher, Stefan Sagmeister, Ben Bos, Wim Crouwel, Rick Poynor, Steven Heller, Patrick Burgoyne, and artist and author Edmund de Waal.

Tony Brook and Patricia Finegan; designed by Spin
Published by Unit EditionsDetails. The first 1,000 copies come with a limited-edition pack of six silk-screened cards in a matching envelope, plus a set of six button badges — designed by Spin.

New Book Release, February 9, 2015: Reproducing Scholten & Baijings

The first book on the work of the Amsterdam-based studio Scholten & Baijings, which has become renowned for its sensitive and subtle yet functional products—from ceramics and silverware to textiles and even a concept car.

Save October 2, 3 & 4 for Designers & Books Fair 2015™—the only book fair anywhere for architecture and design books. Features 40 publishers and rare and out-of-print dealers, plus 9 design programs. Open to the public.

New Book Release, February 10, 2015: Design to Grow: How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (and How You Can Too)

A Coca-Cola senior executive shares both the successes and failures of one of the world’s largest companies as it learns to use design to be both agile and big. In this rare and unprecedented behind-the-scenes look, David Butler and senior Fast Company editor, Linda Tischler, use plain language and easy-to-understand case studies to show how this works at Coca-Cola—and how other companies can use the same approach to grow their business.

By David Butler and Linda Tischler
Published by Simon & SchusterBuy and details